On August 13th 1961, exactly 57 years ago, the GDR leadership locked in its own people. Shortly afterwards that led to an escalation that made the world hold its breath...

Berlin – USArmymilitary police officer Vern Pike (82) received a clear order from General Lucius D. Clay (1898-1978): “If they are Volksarmee, we go to war”.

In the late afternoon of 26 October 1961, seven US tanks and eleven Soviet T-54s stood against each other at Checkpoint Charlie, at the corner of Friedrichstraße and Zimmerstraße. Their tank guns were facing each other.

All markings on the Soviet tanks were covered, so that it was unclear whether Red Army or GDR soldiers were sitting in them. Tanks of the GDR dictatorship – which was not recognized by the US – would have meant a violation of the Allies’ agreements.

If someone had lost their nerve at this moment and had shot a bullet or shell, there could have been a nuclear war of extermination between the world powers. The divided German city would have been at its centre.

Former Soviet ambassador Valentin Falin (1926-2018) later remembered: “We were only seconds and metres away from disaster.”

A dangerous mission

Pike (24 back then) tells BILD how he experienced the crisis. He entered his Opel Sedan, drove from West-Berlin (today Kreuzberg) into the capital of the GDR (today Berlin-Mitte) via Checkpoint Charlie.

Vern Pike (82) was the military police officer in charge at Checkpoint Charlie in 1961

Foto: Parwez

He climbed onto one of the 36-ton-monsters and entered it. There was no solider in there, but he found a Red Army newspaper in Cyrillic writing. He says that he was not afraid. “We were Americans; we had no fear of anybody”.

When Pike then eavesdropped on a group of uniformed men without insignia who were talking in Russian, he was certain: This is not the People’s Army! So no war, for the time being.

“It was that close,” says Wayne Daniels (78), military police veteran of the US Brigades, putting his thumb close to his index finger.

Private first class Wayne Daniels (78) of the 287th military police company was the driver of the very jeep that can be seen in the world-famous photo

Foto: Parwez

During the crisis, Daniels (21 back then) held out in the driver’s seat of a military jeep in front of the checkpoint for 15 hours.

It was the very jeep that can be seen on a world-famous photo of the duel between the tanks. Among them are Shermans that Daniels had previously guided through the West-Berlin rush hour.

“Your but was about that tight,” he says. He was determined to stay alive. Just 17 days prior to his Berlin mission, the conscript from Montana had married his wife, Gayle (77).

How the world crisis arose

Approximately two and a half months earlier, on 13 August 1961, the GDR leadership decided to lock its people in. Barbed wire was followed by concrete structures. Up until then, up to 3000 refugees had escaped into freedom every day.

After the Wall was built, of the former 80 open crossing points only seven guarded crossing points remained. The only one for allies and diplomats was Checkpoint Charlie on Friedrichstraße.

Berlin’s Four Power Status only allowed Soviet, British, French, and American allied soldiers to control passports.

A Berlin Brigade veterans cap

Foto: Parwez

When on 22 October, the deputy head of the US mission in Berlin, Alan Lightner, wanted to drive to the theatre in the East with his wife, as he often did, GDR People’s Policemen suddenly wanted to see his papers.

This was a clear, deliberate provocation that Lightner refused to tolerate. Escorted by military police, he proceeded over the border – straight past the People’s Policemen.

In order to emphasize the enforcement of existing law, the US military police officers, by command of General Clay, repeated this dangerous game with further civil cars in the following days – about 13 times. Pike: “The order was: if anybody stops you, shoot”.

Then the escalation. Soviet tanks rolled up Friedrichstraße, followed by American tanks. The whole night, diplomats negotiated intensely.

Eventually, a hot war was averted. US President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) indicated that he did not support general Clay’s extremely tough stance. Clay had already installed bulldozer shovels at the tanks in order to tear down the Wall. “He wanted to make Swiss cheese out of the Wall,” says Pike.

General Lucius D. Clay was military governor of the U.S. Zone in Germany from 1947 to 1949. He gave the order for the Berlin Airlift. During the Berlin Wall crisis President John F. Kennedy brought him back to Germany in 1961

Foto: Getty Images Editorial

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) convinced the Americans that the GDR passport controls for US representatives had been a solo effort by Chairman of the State Council, Walter Ulbricht (1893-1973). Just before 11 a.m., on 27 October, it was over, and the tanks withdrew.

Veterans reunion in Berlin

When BILD meets Pike and Daniels in a hotel in Berlin-Steglitz, other veterans of the US Brigades are also present who were protecting the West at the time of the German division. Every four years, they come back to Berlin with their families, at their own expense.

Gayle Daniels, who got her Wayne back safe, says: “When I see this wonderful city, I know he’s done the right thing”.

Wayne Daniels survived the crisis and could meet his Gayle (77) again. They stayed together

Foto: Parwez

Many veterans think that General Clay’s tough stance would work against an expansionist Vladimir Putin (65) today.

Pike: “It was always a totalitarian dictatorship. First the tsars, then the communists, now a KGB-Oberst – what has changed?” Pike thinks that the US are heading in the right direction. “Our military is building itself up again”.

Veterans tell their stories to a BILD reporter in a Berlin hotel

Foto: Parwez

US ambassador honors the veterans

We drive back to the fateful site with the veterans – where, these days, tourists are taking pictures of a rebuilt checkpoint with fake soldiers. Pike doesn’t like it.

Daniels and Pike at the Berlin site that made world history: Checkpoint Charlie

Foto: Parwez

He thinks this should be a solemn place. Fondly he remembers: “One of the great joys of our assignment to Berlin were the Berlin people. They appreciated the fact that we were here. I will take that to my grave.”

Carefully guarded, the new US ambassador, Richard Grenell (51) has walked over on foot in order to honor the veterans. “I’m humbled everyday by these heroes,” he tells BILD. “Living in Berlin you can’t help but being thankful”.

The veterans have tears in their eyes, when US ambassador Richard Grenell (2nd from left) honors them and BILD editor in chief, Julian Reichelt, hands them a history book about the Berlin Wall with original wall pieces

Foto: Parwez

A US army brochure from 1980 reads: “Symbolically the Allies have never built a permament structure in Friedrichstrasse, because they believe that Checkpoint Charlie and the Wall that produced it cannot last forever. Someday Berlin must be again one city”.